Check back often for new Q&As, and for daily historical factoids about books. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/deborahkalbbooks. Follow me on Twitter @deborahkalb.

Saturday, October 22, 2016

Q&A with Vanessa Hua

Vanessa Hua is the author of the new story collection Deceit and Other Possibilities. She is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, and has worked for the Los Angeles Times and the Hartford Courant. Her work has appeared in a variety of other publications, including The Atlantic and Guernica. She is based in San Francisco.

Q: Your website describes your characters as "immigrant
families navigating a new America. Tied to their ancestral and adopted
homelands...these memorable characters straddle both worlds but belong to
none." Can you say more about this theme, and how it runs through your
stories?

A: As the American-born child of Chinese immigrants, raised
in a predominantly white suburb east of San Francisco, I knew from early on
that I was different, that my family was different from my neighbors. What my
parents could not or would not explain about the world outside our home, I
figured out through observation and through books.

Later on, I became a journalist, seeking to shine a light
onto untold stories about the immigrant experience and I carried that passion
into my fiction.

Q: You note that you wrote the stories over a period of more
than a decade. Do you see changes in your writing over that time?

A: There were flashes of quiet humor in my work, but in the
stories I wrote more recently, I pushed myself to skate the line the between
real and the over-the-top, in situations ever more desperate, ever more
ridiculous yet tragic.

Q: Do you usually know how a story will end before you start
writing, or do you make many changes along the way?

A: I usually don’t know the end when I start writing, but
the more I enter the story, the more I understand the characters, the more the
stakes are raised, the more the possibilities narrow until the ending feels –
hopefully – inevitable to myself and to the reader.

Q: How was the book’s title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?

A: When I submitted the manuscript to the Willow Books
contest, it was entitled “The Responsibility of Deceit” – which happens to be
the first story I ever published. I thought the phrase reflected the concerns
of the characters throughout the collection.

As I proceeded through the publication process, I presented
a few options to writer friends to make a final decision. Some thought “The
Responsibility of Deceit” was clunky and might confuse potential readers. I
considered “Deceit” or “Deceit and Other Stories” as alternatives.

I asked my mother-in-law her opinion and she repeated it
back incorrectly, saying “Deceit and Other Possibilities,” instead of “and
Other Stories.” Perfect! The dissonance of the phrase reflected how the
characters carry out their secrets and lies with the best of intentions.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: In the spring, I landed a two-book deal at Ballantine. At
present, I’m revising my debut novel, A River of Stars, about a Chinese factory
clerk who comes to America to give birth, bestowing her child with U.S.
citizenship. When her married lover betrays her, she flees.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Thank you for taking the time to read my book and to put
together this interview series!

About Me

Author, THE PRESIDENT AND ME: GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE MAGIC HAT, new children's book (Schiffer, 2016). Co-author, with Marvin Kalb, of HAUNTING LEGACY: VIETNAM AND THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY FROM FORD TO OBAMA (Brookings Institution Press, 2011).